Johnny Ludlow Third Series Part 102

Like a "gaby" did Jane Bright stand: mouth wide open, eyes round, countenance bewildered.

"Please, governess, I didn't do nothing with her."

"You must have done something with her: you held her hand."

"I didn't do nothing," repeated the girl, shaking her head stolidly.

"Now, that won't do, Jane Bright. Where did you leave her?"

"'Twas in the corner," answered Jane Bright, apparently making desperate efforts of memory. "When I was Puss, and runned across and came back again, I didn't see her there."

"Surely, the child has not stolen out by herself and run off home!"

cried Mrs. Coney: and the schoolmistress took up the suggestion.

"It is the very thought that has been in my mind the last minute or two," avowed she. "Yes, Mrs. Coney, that's it, depend upon it. She has decamped through the snow and gone back to her mother's."

"Then she has gone without her things," interposed Maria Lease, who was entering the room with a little black cloak and bonnet in her hand. "Are not these Nettie's things, children?" And a dozen voices all speaking together, hastened to say Yes, they were Nettie's.

"Then she must be in the house," decided Miss Timmens. "She wouldn't be silly enough to go out this cold night with her neck and arms bare. The child has her share of sense. She has run away to hide herself, and may have dropped asleep."

"It must be in the chimbleys, then," cried free Molly from the back of the room. "We've looked everywhere else."

"You had better look again," said the Squire. "Take plenty of light--two or three candles."

It seemed rather a queer thing. And, while this talking had been going on, there flashed into my mind the old Modena story, related by the poet Rogers, of the lovely young heiress of the Donatis: and which has been embodied in our song "The Mistletoe Bough." Could this timid child have imprisoned herself in any place that she was unable to get out of? Going to the kitchen for a candle, I went upstairs, taking the garret first, with its boxes and lumber, and then the rooms. And nowhere could I find the least trace or sign of Nettie.

Stepping into the kitchen to leave the candle, there stood Luke Mackintosh, whiter than death; his back propped against Molly's press, his hands trembling, his hair on end. Tod stood in front of him suppressing his laughter. Mackintosh had just burst in at the back-door in a desperate state of fright, declaring he had seen a ghost.

It's not the first time I have mentioned the man's cowardice. Believing in ghosts and goblins, wraiths and witches, he could hardly be persuaded to cross Crabb Ravine at night, on account of the light sometimes seen there. Sensible people told him that this light (which, it was true, no one had ever traced to its source) was nothing but a will-o'-the-wisp, an ignis-fatuus arising from the vapour; but Luke could not be brought to reason. On this evening it chanced that the Squire had occasion to send Mackintosh to the Timberdale post-office, and the man had now just come in from the errand.

"I see the light, too, sir," he was saying to Tod in a scared voice, as he ran his shaking hand through his hair. "It be dodging about on the banks of the Ravine for all the world like a corpse-candle. Well, sir, I didn't like that, and I got up out of the Ravine as fast as my legs would bring me, and were making straight for home here, with my head down'ards, not wanting to see nothing more, when something dreadful met me. All in white, it was."

"A man in his shroud, who had left his grave to take a moonlight walk,"

said Tod, gravely, biting his lips.

"'Twere in grave-clothes, for sure; a long, white garment, whiter than the snow. I'd not say but it was Daniel Ferrar," added Luke, in the low dread tones that befitted the dismal subject. "His ghost do walk, you know, sir."

"And where did his ghost go to?"

"Blest if I saw, sir," replied Mackintosh, shaking his head. "I'd not have looked after it for all the world. 'Twarn't a slow pace I come at, over the field, after that, and right inside this here house."

"Rushing like the wind, I suppose."

"My heart was all a-throbbing and a-skeering. Mr. Joseph, I _hope_ the Squire won't send me through the Ravine after dark again! I couldn't stand it, sir; I'd a'most rather give up my place."

"You'll not be fit for this place, or any other, I should say, Mackintosh, if you let this sort of fear run away with your senses," I put in. "You saw nothing; it was all fancy."

"Saw nothing!" repeated Mackintosh in the excess of desperation. "Why, Mr. Johnny, I never saw a sight plainer in all my born days. A great, white, awesome apparition it were, that went rushing past me with a wailing sound. I hope you won't ever have the ill-luck to see such a thing yourself, sir."

"I'm sure I shan't."

"What's to do here?" asked Tom Coney, putting in his head.

"Mackintosh has seen a ghost."

"Seen a ghost!" cried Tom, beginning to grin.

Mackintosh, trembling yet, entered afresh on the recital, rather improving it by borrowing Tod's mocking suggestion. "A dead man in his shroud come out walking from his grave in the churchyard--which he feared might be Ferrar, lying on the edge on't, just beyond consecrated ground. I never could abear to go by the spot where he was put in, and never a prayer said over him, Mr. Tom!"

But, in spite of the solemnity of the subject, touching Ferrar, Tom Coney could only have his laugh out. The servants came in from their fruitless search of the dairy and cellars, and started to see the state of Mackintosh.

"Give him a cup of warm ale, Molly," was Tod's command. And we left them gathered round the man, listening to his tale with open mouths.

From the fact that Nettie Trewin was certainly not in the house, one only deduction could be drawn--that the timid child had run home to her mother. Bare-headed, bare-necked, bare-armed, she had gone through the snow; and, as Miss Timmens expressed it, might just have caught her death.

"Senseless little idiot!" exclaimed Miss Timmens in a pa.s.sion. "Sarah Trewin is sure to blame me; she'll say I might have taken better care of her."

But one of the elder girls, named Emma Stone, whose recollection only appeared to come to her when digesting her supper, spoke up at this juncture, and declared that long after "Puss-in-the-corner" was over, and also "Oranges and Lemons," which had succeeded it, she had seen and spoken to Nettie Trewin. Her account was, that in crossing the pa.s.sage leading from the store-room, she saw Nettie "scrouged against the wall, half-way down the pa.s.sage, like anybody afeared of being seen."

"Did you speak to her, Emma Stone?" asked Miss Timmens, after listening to these concluding words.

"Yes, governess. I asked her why she was not at play, and why she was hiding there."

"Well, what did she say?"

"Not anything," replied Emma Stone. "She turned her head away as if she didn't want to be talked to."

Miss Timmens took a long, keen look at Emma Stone. This young lady, it appeared, was rather in the habit of romancing; and the governess thought she might be doing it then.

"I vow to goodness I saw her," interrupted the girl, before Miss Timmens had got out more than half a doubt: and her tone was truthful enough.

"I'm not telling no story, 'm. I thought Nettie was crying."

"Well, it is a strange thing you should have forgotten it until this moment, Emma Stone."

"Please, 'm, it were through the pies," pleaded Emma.

It was time to depart. Bonnets and shawls were put on, and the whole of them filed out, accompanied by Miss Timmens, Mrs. Hill, and Maria Lease: good old motherly Dame Coney saying she hoped they would find the child safe in bed between the blankets, and that her mother would have given her some hot drink.

Our turn for supper came now. We took it partly standing, just the fare that the others had had, with bread-and-cheese added for the Squire and old Coney. After that, we all gathered round the fire in the dining-room, those two lighting their pipes.

And I think you might almost have knocked some of us down with a feather in our surprise, when, in the midst of one of old Coney's stories, we turned round at the sudden opening of the door, and saw Miss Timmens amongst us. A prevision of evil seemed to seize Mrs. Todhetley, and she rose up.

"The child! Is she not at home?"

"No, ma'am; neither has she been there," answered Miss Timmens, ignoring ceremony (as people are apt to do at seasons of anxiety or commotion) and sitting down uninvited. "I came back to tell you so, and to ask what you thought had better be done."

"The child must have started for home and lost her way in the snow,"

cried the Squire, putting down his pipe in consternation. "What does the mother think?"